Homecoming
by Scribbler17
Summary: A series of short pieces describing Barry returning to Iris. Each chapter will feature a different moment and be titled after a certain quote from the show. Not necessarily in a particular or chronological order.
1. I've Never Stopped Thinking About You

"Iris," he pants into her shoulder. "That-that feels-"

"Shhh," she croons softly. She licks his ear, considers whether she should increase her pace or slow down, or if it would even make a difference, given how he's already shuddering. She knows she shouldn't tempt him further, but that fact that he's finally home from his mission with the League, safe, alive, and aroused in her arms again makes it difficult to contain the words welling inside her.

"I touched myself every now and then while you were gone," she huffs, moving her lips to his hair, which despite the sweat, still smells alluring, and will always smell like the eleven-year-old boy she hugged the first time he came home to her. The memory his scent inspires seduces the confession out of her. "I touched myself, thinking about you…"

" _Fuck_ ," he breathes, a word too foul for his pure tongue, for his good heart. And the way he whispers it, the way he swells in her hand, makes her believe him: " _I never stopped thinking about you_."


	2. Come Home to Me

No matter what it was, another League operation, journey through time, voyage to another Earth, the possibility of Barry never returning to her dominates Iris's thoughts. The fear is compelling enough to interfere with her writing, to keep her awake in the depths of night, to bring her to her knees, sometimes crying out, wishing that the Speed Force had never touched him.

The relief that overcomes her whenever he finds his way back home is more powerful though, so much that when he embraces her, she forgets that she was ever afraid at all.

Even more powerful is the desperate heat that befalls them the moment their skins meet.

She's sitting upright between his bare thighs, her own legs spread, one settled on either side of him, binding him to her. In an attempt to be closer to him, she presses her flushed chest against his. When that still doesn't satisfy her, she takes his face in her hands. And when even that isn't enough, she bites down on his lip so hard that she tastes blood.

"Ow," Barry chuckles softly. She knows him better than she knows herself, knows he's trying to make light of her ferocity.

Iris doesn't laugh, or even apologize. Right now, she wants to forget that he's the hero, a speedster.

Right now, she just needs him to be her Bear.

So before he can heal, before the reminder that he's more than human, she leans forward, slowly passing her tongue over the droplet of blood, slick like metal in her mouth.

Barry tenses, and that's all it takes for Iris to realize he understands. The unspoken communication between them could only be a consequence of a bond so potent, it always pulls him from the Speed Force that claims him back to where he belongs: surrounded by her.

His hot breath travels from her neck to her breasts as her lays her back gingerly, their legs still entwined. She watches him move over her body with a hint of triumph and gratitude for a Speed Force that has nothing on her.


	3. When I Touched The Flash

Some nights, the loneliness is intolerable.

She's aware she has the presence of her father and brother, and the privilege of good friends to help her navigate the extended lengths of time that Barry is away. Her dad invites her to spend the night. Wally makes (burns) dinner for her. Cisco and Caitlin promise there's extra office space at STAR Labs open for her use. Linda stops by with a sleeping bag and movie suggestions.

Iris always prided herself on her ability to live and function independently anyways.

But some nights-

Some nights are still unbearable.

On those nights, she'll slip a hand beneath her waistband and quietly stroke her own flesh, contemplating the delicacy of his hands, the veins of his erection, the warmth of his mouth.

Tonight however, the illusion of him beneath her eyelids isn't enough.

She doesn't know how much time has passed, but she does know the back of her neck has never been so damp with sweat as she strains with effort. She's long since kicked her underwear off her legs in a restless frenzy. She can't tell if the sense of panic crushing her chest is because her harsh breathing is lending way to lightheadedness, or if she's struck with a hysteria that the memory of Barry is failing her.

He's been gone too long.

The tears her eyes have been collecting at her labor spill at the thought, but they don't stop her continued attempts. She startles herself with involuntary vocalizations, reflexes she didn't even realize she had. The sound echoing through the empty bedroom douses her in an even greater determination to finish, with more desperation than ever. She thrusts her hips, arcs her back, twists her wrist-

Which someone takes a hold of.

"Iris."

She thinks she's hallucinating until his devoted eyes appear before her, and she's certain her relief at the mere sight of him exceeds any euphoria her hands could grant her.

But nothing surpasses what she feels when he brings his fingers to where hers fell short, murmuring throughout his touch, "I'm right here, Iris. I'm back home."


	4. It's Still Beating

On a chilly autumn Thursday evening, what Iris was expecting was to microwave a frozen dinner and conclude her piece defending fair meta human prosecution before heading to bed. For the last two weeks, she had been completing all work assignments as they came without delay and sleeping right after almost compulsively, an uncharacteristic cycle that she knew was only because she couldn't bear any free time to contemplate Barry's absence.

What she wasn't expecting just as the microwave sounded was for Barry to burst through the front door in a crack of yellow lightning, his cowl removed to reveal windswept hair and a panic-stricken face.

"Barry!" she exclaims, overwhelmed with temporary elation that becomes confusion and finally, concern. "I thought the League was meant to return next wee-"

He surges forward and kisses her fiercely, taking her in his arms as easily as he would pick up a rag doll.

"They told me you were dead," he mumbles against her mouth when she manages to pull away. His eyes are squeezed shut, his brows knitted together as though he's in pain. "They told me you were dead, Iris."

"What?" She's still reeling from his wild kiss, still trying to process that he's here when he isn't supposed to be until later. "Who told you?"

"They told me!" he yells hysterically, startling her. "They SHOWED me Iris! I'm sorry, I had to come back right away, I had to see for myself-"

"Barry, slow down…" she starts, trying to maintain at least a semblance of calm authority despite wanting to cry at the realization that he must have been subject to something truly horrible to be reduced to such a state.

"They told me you were dead," he weeps, shaking manically. He would have crumbled to the floor had they not been holding each other up. "You were dead, Iris."

"Barry, listen to me. I'm not dead. I'm right here, okay?" She frames his face with her hands, thumbs stroking his cheeks, tears forming and spilling from her own eyes. "I'm right here."

When this attempt at reassurance seemingly does little to ease his fear, her memory inspires an idea. She takes one of his hands in her own, slowly peels his glove away to expose pale, slender fingers trembling as much as his entire form is. She glances at him as she takes a deep breath, flattening his palm against her breastbone.

"It's still beating," she murmurs, eyes boring into his.

He whimpers like something inside him broke, and suddenly her back is pressed against a wall, and her lips pressed against his once more. Where his hand was just settled over her heartbeat, his fingers now scramble to unbutton her blouse.

"Barry," she moans into his kiss, torn between wanting him to be alright and wanting him.

He must have felt her hesitancy. "I'm sorry, Iris," he breathes, his lips parting from hers with a wet noise. His palms skim down her neck, across the top of her breasts, back to the patch of skin over her heart. "I want to feel you, all of you. I just want to make sure…"

"Then make sure," she whispers. He stares at her questioningly. She does her best to appear impassive while trying to convey that he can do whatever it is he needs to believe that she's safe and alive in his arms, so safe and alive in fact that's _she's_ worried about _him_.

She surveys his face while he continues to trace the skin of her chest over and over. Eventually he repeats his original pattern: _neck, collarbone, breasts. Neck, collarbone, breasts_ , his pace slowing for each subsequent tracing. No matter where his hands wander, they always end up back at her heartbeat, before commencing again.

Later on they lay facing each other in an array of naked flesh and limbs, still joined long after orgasm, his soft cock nestled inside her. She's aware that she's starting to feel sore from the contact, but can't find it in herself to be bothered. Neither one of them wants to make the first move to break their connection, not to separate or even to look away. Barry especially stares at her like he can't tear his eyes from her for even a moment, as if something might happen to her if he did.

He ends up being the one who interrupts the stillness, and it's only to speak, his eyes still watching her, his legs still tangled with hers.

"You were dead Iris," he repeats, voice hoarse. "They took you."

"They didn't," is all she replies with. And when he doesn't say anything further, instead closing his eyes at last, she thinks he finally gets it.


	5. Running Home to You

She lifts the hem of his tee, untucking his undershirt from his pants with the skill of a single hand. She's not sure what exactly she's expecting, they had only been apart for seven days, but she's nonetheless relieved to find the same navel splashed with dark hair, the same pale freckled skin, the same slim hips just as she had left them, just as he had always been.

She feels his chuckle under her palms before she hears it leave his throat. As she skirts her hands across his abdomen, upwards to his chest, intending to pull both garments over his head, she's taken aback by the sudden motion of him sitting upright and flattening her back against the mattress instead.

"Not so fast," Barry teases, sliding the sleeves of her dress down, unveiling one shoulder at a time. "I've missed you too, you know."

While he's bent over kissing her collar, she squirms beneath his weight, desperate to resume her previous activity, longing to make up for a lost week of touching him. She can sense his smirk stretch wider against her skin the more she twists under him.

"Give up," comes his raspy, satisfied voice midway through kisses.

One thing Iris knows she won't ever do is that, not especially after she has him back in her arms again, has the promise that he'll keep running home to her still ringing in her ears, has the symbol of his devotion wrapped around her finger, has supposedly only months left to be with him.

So she takes a deep breath before slowly plunging a hand below his waistband, finds where he's already stiff between his thighs.

That halts his kissing, replaces it with a sigh of warm breath into her neck.

"Iris…" he croaks, and it's her turn to feel satisfied, to edge him to give up.

When he cups her cheek and coerces her to look at him, when she meets his earnest, pleading eyes, the satisfaction wanes.

"Please," he whispers. "Please let me make it up to you…"

 _You already have._ She wants more than anything to make him believe it, make sure he knows that it doesn't matter to her anymore who's right or who's wrong, who left or who stayed. What does matter is every possible hour of theirs that remains, that every minute of his is spent with her or running back to her.

Still, she relents, for his sake.

She withdraws her hand from his length, out of his pants to link her fingers with his, making sure he can feel the silver of the ring she wears, a ring that graced the fingers of the Allen women of the past, that assures her she may live to become an Allen herself, that she _will_ live to marry the man gazing down at her, the way no one else ever has.

"Alright then," she murmurs, raising the hem of her skirt, bringing his hand to her thigh. "I guess it's my turn to sing."


	6. You Came Back to Me

She doesn't mind the tension between them as they enter their home together. After all, she'd take tension with him over being without him any day. She assumes he must be just as uneasy, given the way he scans his surroundings, as though it's his first time setting foot in the loft. His gaze eventually settles on the couch that's become her bed for the last six months.

Iris feels like she has to explain herself.

"I couldn't bring myself to sleep in our bed."

It's the first any of them have spoken since they left STAR Labs and made the trip home in silence, and her voice is accordingly small, paralleling the content of her admission.

Barry's eyes shift to her and she reads the ache in them. They shed tears when he lifts one of the many framed photographs of the two of them scattered throughout the apartment that she turned over facedown the very night he disappeared.

"I couldn't even look at that…" she whispers, scarcely able to articulate.

He sets the frame down upright and turns toward her, still crying. She knows he's weeping for her, and her own eyes well on his behalf in addition to hers, for how much she's missed him and how excruciating it's been without him.

But she's aware there's another reason behind his tears. Maybe she shouldn't probe yet, maybe she should give him time, maybe she should just be grateful that he's back, but all the gratitude coursing through her presently doesn't erase the pain of his departure, and her characteristic curiosity aside, she needs to understand what happened to him to not only reconcile her heartache, but to assuage him. If all she had heard of the Speed Force was true-if he had really suffered for six months-she wants his suffering to halt right then and now.

"Was it hell?" she blurts before she can help herself, praying his answer won't confirm her worst fears.

More tears streak their way down his cheeks, and her stomach knots in dread.

"I was away from you," he replies. "What do you think?"

He's being honest, but isn't telling her the whole truth. She should have figured: Barry was always going to protect her.

He cups her face, thumbs at her tears before running his fingers through her short locks.

"You cut your hair," he remarks softly. She doesn't miss the attempt to change the subject, lighten the mood, but although the corners of his lips turn slightly upward, the corners of his eyes still glisten.

She accepts that they most likely aren't going to talk now, maybe even for some time, perhaps an inconvenient and often difficult consequence of how selfless she knows the love between them to be. She can recognize that he won't discuss what happened to spare her because she would do the same for him. It strikes Iris how much her relationship with him differs from any she's had in the past, what she would sacrifice for him, tolerate from him, and give him that she might never have done for anyone else.

If he didn't want to talk tonight, she would afford him that. But she meant what she intended about consoling him. She takes advantage of his proximity and his hands on her face to pull him closer for a kiss, and is relieved that he doesn't restrain himself in response. Despite wanting both of them to open up about their time apart, a carnal part of her is thrilled Barry has no reservations about accounting for their time apart in this manner, that he wants to touch her as much as she wants to him.

They move with the same urgency they did the last time they kissed, the night they soaked their sheets in hopeless fervor, believing it might have been their final hours together, unaware how true that would prove.

Through their fierce kissing, Iris pushes Barry onto the couch and he goes willingly, his hands still fisted in her hair. She appreciates that he's letting her steer, and she wonders if perhaps this is his subtle way of accepting that she wants to give and, even better, that he wants to take from her. It was rare for Barry to be selfish, even when she wants him to be, and she exploits the anomaly by trailing her mouth over the angle of his jaw, beneath its hinge where his pulse is vigorous, a reminder that he's alive and his heart pounds for her, because of her. She tongues every strong beat in his neck, and the tilt of Barry's head, the tiny sigh he expels, the tightening of his fingers in her hair set her own heart racing. Her lips travel more desperately now to the pale column of his throat and the swell of his Adam's apple, to the slight scratch of stubble under his chin left after she shaved the wild beard he sprouted in the Speed Force. She feels his neck quiver below her lips to breath her name.

When Barry hauls her back up to his mouth eagerly, she follows suit, but not until she makes sure he knows she's still the commanding one. Iris's fingers curl in his shirt, holding him in place while her second hand snakes down his chest to his abdomen, lifts his shirt up, eases into his waistband, skirts over coarse hair to palm the swell there.

Barry breaks their kiss to press his forehead to hers, panting hard.

"Iris…"

There's no warning undertone to his plea, and she tugs and reaches with more conviction-Barry's palm clenching her arm-urging her to keep doing what she's doing-until she pulls him free.

Her heart thuds in her ears at the sight of him-engorged and angled, circled with a heavy tangle of dark coils, another outcome of being trapped in the Speed Force. Barry's forehead still touches hers, his eyes still closed tightly. She can't completely read him, but he looks pained, and that's enough for her to decipher.

She holds him in her palm, turns her head to kiss the nearest part of his face she can reach, and then she strokes.

"It was hell, wasn't it?" she murmurs.

He trembles softly against her. "It was," he sobs.

"I'm sorry," she breathes, tearing up at having made him cry. She fondles him with more rigor. "Don't think about it."

"I'm not," he swallows, eyelids still shut, his breathing more brisk at her movements. "I'm thinking about how just the feel of you now is worth that hell."

She escalates the speed and pressure with which she works him, like she hopes her hands squeeze and siphon all the torment from him. Iris missed the way he felt, hard and heated and responsive. Her gaze alters between his cock and his face, just as receptive to her touch, with the part of his lips, the flush of his skin, the flutter of his lashes. She would give anything to watch both at once, how she had yearned for every part of him, but the alternating view still elicits a throb between her own legs.

Barry suddenly places a hand over hers, interrupting her focused gaze on his length, more taut and reddened than ever. When she looks back to his face, his eyelids flap open to reveal hazy pupils.

"Inside you," is all he manages to utter.

"Barry-"

"They didn't let me touch you-" he interrupts her, still gasping and struggling to catch his breath. He closes his eyes, gulps, and tries again: "They showed me you, but didn't let me touch you. So please-let me touch you."

Iris doesn't know who 'they' is, but she isn't about to refuse the anguish in his face and his words, nor is she about to ignore the ache that's been slowly building beneath her while she watched and caressed Barry, that's in fact been building for six months without him.

So she obliges him, under one condition.

"Take me to bed," she requests. She knows, after half a year, now that he's finally back, it's time.

As though he's prompted by her simple demand, Barry takes her face in his hands and kisses her with such force that she lets out an exclamation. She's glad he swallows it and doesn't let it stop him from moving to tear her clothes off her. Now it's Iris's turn to take from him. She goes completely lax and lets him undress her, lets him strip her of everything she's wearing, lets him pick her up and carry her to their bedroom. She wraps her naked limbs around him, lays her head on his shoulder, relishes the sense of being so small and vulnerable in his arms and the skin of his willing erection against the skin of her navel.

They enter their room together for the first time since the night they laughed about which song they would pick for the first dance at their wedding reception. Barry lays her down carefully across the mattress, the sheets and blankets just as disheveled as they were the last time they made love, having been untouched since then. His eyes never leave her as he rids himself of his own clothes, is finally more than just naked around the waist. She also refuses to look away from him, as he exposes more and more of himself until he's standing nude before her.

Iris can't believe what would possess her to laugh at a time like this, but she does, faintly, tentatively. Barry looks slightly taken aback, but his own eyes crinkle too. She can't help it, she's tired of losing time being afflicted when she could revel in Barry's presence now, in his return to her, in his body being primed to join hers right now. She doesn't want to waste another moment not cherishing his proximity.

She unfurls her legs, inviting to climb over her, to come into her. The trickle that passes down her thigh in anticipation of his touch comes as a relief: she thought she'd never feel this kind of arousal again. Barry's eyes darken as he covers her frame with his, pushes into her. She spreads herself even further for him, so that he can ease his way inside her. They inhale together at the sensation of their contact, at finally being reunited in every sense, in spirit and in skin.

Barry's thrusts within her start out slow and steady.

"How did I think I could be without you?" he laments through his motions. "What was I thinking?"

"It's okay," she assures him, bringing a hand to stroke his cheek, while her other hand comes under his arm to his back, holding him in place, steadying him against her. "You came back to me."

"And I'm never leaving you again," he swears and the ferocity in his tone, the fortitude in his eyes intensifies the pulse at her cunt. His promise compels him to thrust harder until the bed sways. With the force of their rocking, something falls from off the nightstand and shatters, Iris supposed it must be one of their framed photographs she couldn't bear to look at all this time, but it didn't matter because she's looking into Barry's eyes right now and wonders how she made it this long without his green eyes piercing into her, without his flesh penetrating her.

She cries his name loudly, moans in euphoria like she needs the Speed Force, God, whoever took him to hear her as a vengeance, to know that she had him back and was never letting him go.

Once the wave of ecstasy tames, he kisses her face softly. She's a bit less composed than he is, leaning forward to lick every bit of sweat her tongue finds, off his chest, his neck, his jaw. The salt she tastes isn't just from his sweat however, and she realizes her tears must have fallen when the rush of elation subdued. The weight of his absence and how much she had longed for him overwhelms her once again.

From his lips on her cheeks, Barry must have tasted her tears, and though he kisses them away, he doesn't mask his concern, or what must have been on his mind.

"Should we talk about it?" he surfaces to ask, reading her thoughts, his arms coming around from under her to hold her closer. She figures their sex must have given him a newfound desire and willingness to open up, figures he must have needed to know she was real and tangible first, and she considers what that must indicate about what kind of torture he experienced.

Her tears persist, as do his kisses, but Iris feels braver.

"I thought this time was really it," Iris confesses. "I thought I was never going to see you again."

"I know." He pushes the hair back from her face, kisses her mouth gently. "I know." A wet drop falls onto her cheek, alerting her that he's commenced crying once again.

"I shouldn't have left you," he grieves.

She's unable to counter because he _shouldn't_ have left her and she never wanted him to, but instead of agreeing with him, instead of furthering his guilt, she holds his face, speaks another truth that she knows she's going to have to remember over and over again to reconcile their separation: "You didn't have a choice. But you're here now." She pulls him down to her to embrace him more tightly. "You're here."


	7. You're My Home

They barely make it through the loft before coats tear off, whip away, and fall carelessly to the ground. Aware of the severity of her own yearning for him over the past weeks, of her dread that her marriage was forever reduced to a series of exchanges through glass, of her fear that she would be a wife to someone she could never touch again, whenever she mustered the hope to imagine this reunion, Iris was certain she would be the more agitated of the pair, but she had underestimated her husband. Barry is the one who kicks the door shut behind them, drops the leftovers Joe insisted they take-his favorite meatloaf be damned-and tackles her to the staircase, not even bothering to head to the bedroom.

Clearly he wasn't as enduring in prison as he would have liked her to believe.

She finds her skirt bunched-up around her hips, it would take too long to pull it all the way down her legs. Barry fumbles with the knotted bow at her top, before giving up with the light huff of a " _Fuck"_ , seemingly deciding her chest isn't worth the effort, as long as he can touch her in other ways as soon as possible.

Still though, he makes time to kiss her through his movements.

They both scrabble at his pants, aggressively panting into each other's mouths as they manage to pry him out together.

"Hey," Iris finds herself vocalizing suddenly, just before he descends into her. She curses herself for waiting until now to say this, until the moment they're both throbbing with desperation, on the brink of alleviating the pain of their separation, because she meant to say it so many other times before, had so many opportunities to say it before, even just hours ago.

"Yeah?" he inquires, albeit a little laboriously. His eyes are cloudy, his breathing heavy, the anticipation building through him so tense that he's beading at the very tip of his length, but he gazes at her with concerned devotion nonetheless.

She takes his face in her hands, thumbs the scruff on his cheeks. As coarse as it is against her fingertips, as rough a contrast it is to his young face, it doesn't mask his gentle affect or change that he's the same Barry beneath that she's always loved, even after the coma, after the Speed Force, after prison.

"I'm home now too," she utters simply, but they're the truest words she's ever spoken.

Barry blinks down at her, momentarily quiet. Then he bends forward, kisses her lips fully, and sinks into her.

She reads the concentration in his expression: he's focused on what's ensuing between them, but Iris wants more, needs as much of his skin on hers as they can manage. While he moves inside her, she deftly undoes the ribbon that he couldn't loosen and slides her shirt over her head, tossing it aside, grateful for the easy movement of silk. So that she doesn't interrupt his thrusting, she merely tugs his shirt up so that his bared ribs can graze hers. He grunts in acknowledgment of the contact, continuing to push into her. She understands his rashness and his fixation on finishing, there would be time for tenderness later.

But then he links his fingers with hers like he risked doing at Iron Heights, and she realizes that Barry would never withhold any sort of affection from her. She remembers those days she would have given up everything just to feel his hand again, and at this recollection, grips him back, scarcely able to believe that she can reach him with no barrier now, let alone believe that he's inside her.

"You're my home," she asserts, whispering it in his ear. "You're my home. You're my home," she declares over and over agin, kissing a different part of his face each time she repeats it. She didn't intend to stir him further, but at her words, his pace quickens and his breath shallows anyway.

" _Iris_ ," he purrs, her name trembling from him. She clings to him, falls open for him, lets him have everything. It's easy to give herself away when everything to her is him.

They're both aching but delirious afterward, Barry's knees propped ungracefully against two adjacent stairs, another step pressed firmly to Iris's back below her shoulder blades. She can't find it within herself to feel uncomfortable, not when she's in his embrace again.

She can lay like this for the rest of the night, but he extracts himself from her and carries her to their bedroom, leaving their deposited clothes scattered on the stairs. She's on the verge of sleep as soon as he sets her on the bed, though she fights desperately to stay alert, wanting to be awake with Barry.

She watches him as he slowly works to relieve her of her hiked-up skirt, indulging in the deep absorption his features twist in, in the movement of his chest, even letting her eyes flicker downward at the slight sway of his cock with his motions, before settling back onto his handsome face.

"Barry," she starts, pleasantly drowsy.

"Mhmm?" He discards her skirt and smiles unabashedly, looking more like himself, the fervid aftermath of their sex finally evaporating from him.

She reaches up to stroke his mane, before grinning at him. "I like the beard."


End file.
